My mums laptop is not very well managed and I would like to clean it up and perform a fresh install on it and teach her the ropes from scratch as she is having a lot of performance problems with it at the moment.

I don't think it came with these CD's. I bought one for myself two months ago and i didn't get this with it. Both were bought new from the Official Apple store near me.
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h00jApr 15 '12 at 17:03

Yours may have come with Lion, for which no recovery media is included because you are supposed to use the new Lion recovery partition. All macs prior to Lion shipped with a booklet containing CD/DVD's. If for some reason it's missing I recommend going back to the Apple store explaining the situation and asking for a Macbook Pro SL install disk. They may just give you a replacement set (because it's locked to hardware it's not like giving away a retail version.) Otherwise you may have to buy the retail DVD, go secondhand or go to a website of low moral fiber.
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TyrApr 15 '12 at 18:39

The OS is preisnatalled, but all new MacBook Pros with original OS version of Snow Leopard or below come with install DVD (pictured in another answer). Note that that's not the case for Lion.

If you didn't buy the machine new or if you have lost the install DVD you could try to find someone who has Macbook Pro from the same year and with the same screen size and use that install DVD. Some later years may also work, but it is not guaranteed.

If you want to and could use Lion (see requirements) instead of Snow Leopard, you could install Lion on top of SL via the App Store.app (that costs $29), burn install DVD or make install USB in the process and then do a clean install of Lion. Alternatively, you can buy Lion USB drive from Apple (more expensive) and do clean install from there.

Can i buy an Lion CD and reinstall with that?
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h00jApr 15 '12 at 17:05

Not a CD, but USB drive directly from Apple: store.apple.com/us/product/MD256Z/A; it can be used the same way as install CD. It is more expensive than downloading Lion and creating install CD on your own; but it is much easier.
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lupinchoApr 15 '12 at 18:37